Now then... our Digital Bits Comic-Con panel went very well on Thursday afternoon! We had a packed room with lots of Bits readers asking great questions about Blu-ray. Our friend Charles de Lauzirika revealed that he’s officially working on the forthcoming Blu-ray of Ridley Scott’s The Martian. Cliff Stephenson is busy working on the Hannibal: Season Three Blu-ray for Lionsgate. And of course Robert Meyer Burnett has just completed the Prelude to Axanar Blu-ray for backers of that project on Kickstarter. Rob is also working with executive producer Alec Peters and myself on the full Star Trek: Axanar feature film – Rob is going to direct the film and I’m co-writing it with Alec. (As it happens, Charles de Lauzirika is helping to produce the film, and Cliff is going to produce the forthcoming Blu-ray special features, so quite literally everyone on our Bits panel is involved in the Axanar project.) You can view the project’s IndieGoGo page here (it launched during Comic-Con). More on that in a moment. As the panel wound on, we discussed the future of Blu-ray and indie studio releases on the format, we talked a little about Ultra HD Blu-ray (we’ll have more on that later this month), and we took questions from the audience. [Read on here…]

We’ve got a bit of good Blu-ray release news for you today, and a new Bits staffer too! First the news…

Anchor Bay Entertainment has set The Walking Dead: The Complete Fifth Season for Blu-ray and DVD release on 8/25 (SRP $79.99 and $69.98). That’s the regular edition and, as always, there will be another McFarlane Toys Limited Edition too that will be announced shortly. [Read on here…]

Are any of you guys Star Trek fans? Of course, you are! Well, we have something awesome to report for you today. I’m sure many of you are familiar with Prelude to Axanar – we’ve mentioned it here before. It’s a professionally-produced and original fan film, directed by Christian Gossett (of The Red Star fame) and set in the Star Trek universe. It’s sort of an in-world documentary production, as if produced by Memory Alpha and the Federation Historical Society, that looks back at the so-called Four Years War between the Klingons and the Federation. Remember: This is an entirely non-profit effort, completely funded by fans through Kickstarter. It was so successful that a full feature-length dramatic film called Axanar is now deep into pre-production that tells the actual story of that war. [Read on here…]

Okay… we’ve got a good bit of ground to cover for you guys today as the dust begins to settle from another Comic-Con, so let’s get right to it.

First let’s talk about the titles that were officially announced at (or around) the show, and then we’ll get to the latest rumors and other news on those that weren’t. We’ll start with Batman… [Read on here…]

So... how’d you guys do in your Oscar pools? Here’s hoping you’re all sitting on a few extra bucks today and the sweet satisfaction of out-picking all your office pals. ‘Cause really, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

About Bill Hunt

Bill Hunt is the Editor in Chief of The Digital Bits, which he founded in the early days of the DVD format in 1997 to bring together the Hollywood film community and movie fans from around the world. His columns…